Question

What’s the best choice for defining a large table in org-mode (by large, I mean that each cell can have multiple lines)? The one feature of org-mode is its ability to export to HTML or LaTeX (or other), but in this case would I have to commit to the export format a priori and hard-code the table in that language (e.g., HTML)? What software would you use to create table with mostly text fields with paragraphs in each cell in the first place (which you could convert to HTML, for instance)?

Answer 1

You might want to look at table-mode. This supports the sort of “large tables” you’re talking about. It’s been part of the emacs distribution for some time now. Start with

(require 'table)

somewhere in ~/.emacs. Create an empty file or buffer, type

M-x table-insert RET

answer the initial questions sensibly and then play around a bit. You can get some documentation with

C-h f table-insert RET

To find more documentation, you’ll need to locate the source code. Start with

M-x locate-library RET table RET

This will show you the location of the byte-compiled lisp file for table-mode, and in that same directory you should fine table.el or table.el.gz, which will contain documentation you’ll need to at least skim. Most linux systems (foolishly) do not install the .el files by default, so you’ll have to go rooting around with the package manager to get them.

I was fairly sure that org-mode knew how to parse table-mode tables and format them for you, but I can’t seem to find that written down anywhere right now.